Wednesday, June 02, 2010

I'm number 8577, what's your number?

What am I talking about? Something a little different today. 8577 is my number, representing one voice out of the approximately 3.3 billion girls and women in the world. It's one of the clever hooks for the G(irls)20 Summit, to be held in Toronto 10 days before the G20, a super idea to draw attention to the need to support women and girls around the world and to start a new annual forum on the world stage, devoted to girls.

The viral global campaign to solicit grassroots ideas on how to reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that most impact women and girls will culminate in the inaugural, ground-breaking G(irls)20 Summit. The Summit will bring together one girl from each of the G20 countries to Toronto ten days before the official G20 Summit. This inaugural G(irls)20 Summit will reconvene prior to next year’s G20 Summit in France. This is the start of a global conversation about the economic prowess of girls and women and our commitment to creating a space where girls voices can be heard globally.

Canada's impressive young delegate is Leah Stuart-Sheppard who dazzled on CTV in an appearance yesterday with Belinda Stronach, who is on the Girls 20 Committee and whose foundation is one of the many partner organizations who are organizing the summit (like Plan Canada's Because I Am A Girl, for example).

This seems like a smart lead-in to these global events, to take advantage of the attention they get but with future leaders, girls all.